N. Koreans alienated from Olympics

Chosun reported, “Hwang Young-cho, the marathon gold medalist in the 1992 Barcelona Olympic Games, was my first sporting hero and has left me with an indelible memory. I saw him running on TV in China, while living a precarious refugee life there after escaping from North Korea. It gave me courage. I was so filled with emotion at seeing my first South Korean athlete win the race that I almost wept. At the same time, I was indignant at the North Korean regime: even allowing that it was in confrontation with the South, it seemed wrong that it had never shown the public any South Korean athletes in action.”

“Sixteen years have elapsed, but the North Korean authorities still refuse to show Olympic events live; they only make brief reports on medal-winning North Korean athletes. Though 10 years have passed since we started the Sunshine Policy, most North Koreans don’t know what the taegukgi, our national flag, looks like.”

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